King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson (Duke and Duchess of Windsor)

[Eric_Lowe]

I agree, but after the war there were less and less excuses not to allow the Windsors to come back into the fold. The only logical stumbling bloc was the Queen Mum. I don't think George VI would mind his brother and wife coming back and Queen Mary actually wished for it (according to the authorized bio of the Queen Mother).

[CountessKate]

I agree, but after the war there were less and less excuses not to allow the Windsors to come back into the fold. The only logical stumbling bloc was the Queen Mum. I don't think George VI would mind his brother and wife coming back and Queen Mary actually wished for it (according to the authorized bio of the Queen Mother).

I don't think it was just Queen Elizabeth - while Queen Mary might have wanted her son and George VI his brother, the Duke of Windsor quite naturally was not prepared to have his wife take any less than what he perceived as her natural place by his side.  However, the two Queens and the King were of those generations which blamed the women far more than they blamed the men for sexual irregularities, and Wallis seems, unfairly, to have been given the chief blame for the abdication and the idea of Wallis having a prominent role amongst the royal family struck against all the values which Edward had so clearly abdicated and which his family had inherited.  Divorced women were not received at court - was Wallis to be an exception?  Were they to support and give prominance to a person to whom the British nation and its colonies largely disliked? 'Hark the herald angels sing, Mrs Simpson's pinched our king!' was very much a prevailing sentiment at the time, and it put the royal family into a severe dilema.  They were trying to renew and develop the idea of the monarchy as a respectable family business, and whatever the sentiment they might have felt for the Duke, his presence was a problem because of his wife.  I'm not saying it was right, but I don't think it was simply a case of dislike or family feud alone which made George VI and Elizabeth hostile to the idea of the Windsors coming back to Britain.  Quite apart from anything else, there wasn't a role for either of them - and the Duke had made it quite clear that he loathed the idea of a life full of the public duties which his brother and sister-in-law were carrying out so suprisingly successfully.  Was it reasonable to think that the Windsors should just melt into "the fold" of the royal family when so much of their married life was perceived as the antithesis of the new royal moral values?  It would have been easy to see them as likely to establish a sort of hostile mini-court - and certainly the Windsors themselves had done nothing to reassure the current King and Queen that they had any loyalty to the heads of the family or were prepared to work for the new royal ‘firm’.  I know that these days it is hard to understand what seem very minor considerations besides family feelings but that was not the case immediately after the war which had not changed the sort of moral values which had prevailed immediately before it.  It took longer for the Windsors to be perceived as a great romance rather than the Duke as being seduced by the double-divorcee, as in “Hark the herald angels sing, Mrs Simpson's pinched our King”.

[feodorovna]

I concur with most of what you say but I can't believe that the QM was powerful enough to singlehandedly prevent the return to England of Wallis and Edward. I imagine also, that the government, in part because of how they had acquitted themselves during the war,would have been none too keen to see their return.

[LadyCathy]

Even if Wallis had been in better health, given her great age, she may have seen the message as an irrelevance. I don't, for one moment, think she had been holding her breath in anticipation of her sister-in-law's forgiveness and as David was dead she may have felt that the past had happened too long ago to matter. I imagine, had the gesture been made during his lifetime, her feelings would have been entirely different.........and whilst I'm not a feminist, I feel aggrieved when so often women are blamed for situations which are created by men. I don't believe Wallis capable of MAKING David do anything-although I'm convinced he would have impressed on her that everything he did was for her benefit-I feel that what David did was always with David's best interests in mind.

Perhaps Wallis was not capable of making David do anything, but David also could not "make" her marry him.  Not even the King of England can force an American citizen to marry him.  If Wallis had wanted to get rid of David she could have done so in five minutes.  As far as the Queen Mother is concerned, she did dislike them both.  For one thing she felt that they ruined her life.  Her husband was thrust into a job for which he had no training.  Her children were on constant display.  She had to give up her home and her privacy and her very precious freedom.  She watched her husband grow more nervous and distraught through the war.  David had cried poverty to Bertie who had given him half of his own inheritance, when David really had over a million dollars stashed away along with a ranch in Canada.  She also could not forgive that trip to visit Hitler.  I do not believe the government would have sanctioned any real position for David in England after that display of lack of judgment on his part. 

[Eddie_uk]

Well summed up LadyCathy!

[LadyCathy]

I believe that Greg says that QEII was about ten when she asked her nanny who Wallis was.  She had never met or played with Wallis.

But Greg also says that Prince Charles disliked Wallis because his grandmother had told him what a terrible person Wallis was.

The Queen Mum was indeed not a very nice person as she herself is quoted to have said.

Princess Elizabeth wanted to know who Wallis Simpson was after she and David showed up uninvited and unannounced at the Royal Lodge with a group of friends.  Wallis was very quick to point out to David that a tree should be moved off the property to better the view.  This was an ill-mannered if not uncouth thing to do.  It was taken that since The Royal Lodge was crown property David really owned Bertie and Elizabeth's home and could make any landscaping changes he wished to it.  David was quite embarrassed by this lack of manners and tried to slough it off.  One of the reasons Elizabeth thought Wallis was a terrible person was in addition to all else she once had been a guest a Fort Belvedere and on entering the drawing room heard Wallis imitating her high pitched voice and speaking with an exaggerated English accent.  To Wallis Elizabeth was simply her boyfriend's sister-in-law and she treated her, in Crawfie's words "with that immediate friendliness that Americans have."  Elizabeth was not having any.  She did not like her and thought her ill-bred no matter how many English aristocrats she was related to.  Wallis could be excused for not knowing the customs and being ingnorant of proper behavior towards the British royals, but she was not forgiven for not at least making an effort to learn the ropes in order to be appropriate in such situations.

[mcdnab]

I've commented before so if I repeat myself I apologise - few points I would like to add to the discussion though:
In Elizabeth's defence one moment she was happily married, with two small daughters and a devoted husband and family, the next she is Queen Consort with a husband who is petrified he isn't up to the job - I think it is perhaps forgiveable that she found it hard to be charitable to the woman who in her view caused it all.
Now don't get me wrong i tend to agree with a certain courtier about the Duchess of York - "My reading of history is that she was quite happy as Duchess of York etc.....that doesn't mean to say she wouldn't want NOT to be Queen now."
Elizabeth was pretty much a typical example of a woman of her time, her class and her upbringing - as the first commoner to marry into the British Royal Family since Anne Hyde she was perhaps as Eleanor Roosevelt commented a bit "self-conciously regal" or as one politician put it a very conservative woman from a "pretty reactionary stable".
She was also popular, had a very mixed circle of friends and tended to be loyal to them.
During the early years of her marriage she was close to the Duke of Windsor and aware of the constraints put upon him and the difficulties he had with his parents in particular his father George V (as atttested to in some surviving letters from her to him).
I think it is common to suggest that Elizabeth was the power in the marriage whilst i think her influence and support were essential to the King - I don't think it is natural to read that she dictated attitudes to the Windsors - in fact the King's most recent biographers have been pretty clear that his views (particular in relation to the HRH) were very much his own. Even when the legal advice he received as King was contrary to his own insincts.
A number of recent biographers have also indicated that her longevity, popularity and strength have tended to downplay how reliant on her husband she was.
As Duke and Duchess of York, George and Elizabeth got on very well with the then Prince of Wales and certainly accepted and spent time with both Freda Dudley Ward (who Elizabeth once commented must be a most remarkable woman for certain things not to have happened) and with Lady Furness (who herself in her own biography was quite complimentary to the then Queen Mother perhaps unsurprisingly).

Wallis was different and I think to be fair the whole Royal Family felt the change quite deeply (particularly the Yorks and the Kents) - the Prince's behaviour changed and the things about Wallis that charmed him (her candour, humour, and the way she treated him as just a man rather than as some kind of demi-god) were the things that most puzzled and embarrassed his relations (and many others in his circle). But his determination to marry her was the key to the reaction of his family.
As is often the case the family chose to blame the cause, Wallis, rather than the person who was really to blame, Edward.
I don't know when Wallis and Edward began their derogatory comments about the Duchess of York - I suspect it was after his accession when there were some very uncomfortable moments - but to be fair by then Edward had reduced the time he saw his brothers and their families to the bare minimum (the Kents who had been very close to him felt it rather keenly) everything including his Royal duties came second to his all-consuming passion for Wallis.
The infamous meeting at Balmoral (as featured in the Kings Speech and in numerous biographers) is debated as whether it happened.

Certainly those comments became cattier and more unpleasant as time continued. On the other side we know Elizabeth enjoyed derogatory comments about Wallis (Joseph Kennedy's comment whilst at dinner at Windsor, the Queen's reference to "that woman" for example).

She certainly was infuriated by what she saw as attempts to brow-beat the King with constant telephone calls from Austria and then France and the Duke's  high profile visits and trips and speeches which to be fair horrified the government, the court aswell as the Royal Family..

To be fair to Edward he wasn't used to having time on his hands nor to being ignored and not able to have it all his own way...he tended in conversation to continue to treat his younger brother as a younger brother rather than his sovereign which increasingly frustrated and irritated both sides.

His own lies about his financial position didn't help relations between the brothers which went quite frankly from bad to worse.

[mcdnab]

Sorry continued from above

George VI had an absolute and understandable desire to keep his brother out of England. He never overcame his own feelings of inferiority to his glamorous older brother and irrespective of his own immense popularity especially after the war he couldn't quite believe that given a choice people still wouldn't opt for his brother.

Edward VIII had plenty of choices about where he lived in the 40s it was himself who insisted on the one thing none of the Royal family were keen on - his wife being received and it being recorded in the Court Circular - Hence Elizabeth's letter to Queen Mary on their return from the Bahamas "What are we to do about Mrs S Mama?" or words to that effect - the Duke's main reason for wanting some kind of official position was to be able to avoid paying tax.

Elizabeth's letter to the foreign office reference the appointment to the Bahamas was in her own words a view given that the appointment was already a fait d'accomplit given that Churchill and the King wanted the Windsor out of harms way for the duration down in part to his own behaviour (anyone thinking Churchill was still sympathetic should read his telegrams on the issue including the one that was ammended because it was so inflammatory).

Certainly the US Government at the time were equally unsympathetic to the appointment and had their own concerns about the Duke and his asssociates.

With regard the Windsors treatment by official Britain in their exile - there were concerns at the Palace and in the Foreign Office in the aftermath of the abdication about the Duke's acitivities overseas adn the cosiness of certain British ambassadors who were either friends or aquaintances  (long before the German trip) and the official advice was that he was to be treated as if he were "a member of the Royal family" on holiday along with a raft of advice about the position if a foreign head of state wished him to attend an official function etc. The bottom line was that if in doubt about how to proceed then London was to be contacted for an official view.

It can read today as rather petty and perhaps it was (particular who should meet him on arrival etc) but it was in keeping with precedent for junior members of the royal family on non official trips overseas.

Yes cutting them adrift allowed them to fall in with people and organisations who used them for their own ends but that wouldn't have been possible if the DUke in particular had not been so keen to maintain some kind of position (which is why the idea of him trooping round England undertaking the kind of duties he'd hated as Prince of Wales and King on behalf of his younger brother is laughable).

In later years memories of her own courtiers suggest that the Queen Mother as she became was not filled with any particular hatred for Wallis - I don't doubt that their life fascinated her but she like the King she was never going to countenance anything that "didn't make sense of the past".
And the one thing Elizabeth was in widowhood was determined to protect her husbands reputation, views and opinions - as a biographer said in any discussions with her family about a change she didn't approve of her favourite line to indicate disapproval was  "the King wouldn't have liked it."
The invitation to the Queen Mary memorial in the sixties was a rare exception but as i think Vickers pointed out "she wouldn't have had them for lunch though, they went to the Gloucesters".

[Eric_Lowe]

Firstly I do not agree that if Wallis did not want to marry David, he could get rid of him in 5 minutes. That is simply not true. When Wallis begged him not to abdicate and offer to leave for good, he told her it is no use. It has been decided. To David, Wallis was the solution to his desire not to rule. Do you think that Wallis could refuse to marry him after he abdicated ? Is she was she was either a fool or a monster. Something Wallis wasn't. As an old woman Wallis often had a guilty conscience. "He gave up so much for me !" The least she could do was to stick by him, and that she did (to the astonishment of the RF and the establishment).   

[LadyCathy]

Firstly I do not agree that if Wallis did not want to marry David, he could get rid of him in 5 minutes. That is simply not true. When Wallis begged him not to abdicate and offer to leave for good, he told her it is no use. It has been decided. To David, Wallis was the solution to his desire not to rule. Do you think that Wallis could refuse to marry him after he abdicated ? Is she was she was either a fool or a monster. Something Wallis wasn't. As an old woman Wallis often had a guilty conscience. "He gave up so much for me !" The least she could do was to stick by him, and that she did (to the astonishment of the RF and the establishment).   

Wallis Simpson was an American married woman who made the choice to become the POW's mistress.  Once King George V died and David became King she certainly could have gotten rid of him in five minutes.  Long before the abdication was even a subject of discussion Wallis could have gotten rid of him.  Do I believe that Wallis could have refused to marry him after he abdicated, I answer that she could have stopped the whole process long before by leaving him and the country.  The King of England, as powerful as he is, still cannot force a citizen of his own or any other country to marry him.  She made a choice to stay on and not leave him.  Yes, Wallis begged him not to abdicate.  She threatened to run away and he told her he would find her.  So what?  So he would find her.  That still does not mean she had to marry him.  I think that Wallis was neither a monster nor a fool.  I this she was David Windsor's willing tool in this situation and that both of them were selfish self-absorbed people.  I also would like to add that Bertie loved Elizabeth as much as David loved Wallis.  However, although it might have ruined his live and broken his heart there is no question in my mind that Bertie would never have given up the throne.         

[Eric_Lowe]

I think you are being unfair and unduly harsh on Wallis. She grew up dirt poor and got a crummy marriage (her first husband beat her) and finally settled on a convenient friendship marriage with Ernst Simpson. To her it is the triumph of being sensible than being in love. When POW fell in love with her, she sees it as kind of adventure. What woman in their right mind would refuse the most charming, powerful and well connected man in Britain ? Not many I bet. In fact she was in the same category of Thelma Furness & Freda Dudley-Ward. It was not Wallis who wanted to marry Edward, but the other way around. In her letters to her Aunt Bessie, one could see the mind of a reasonable and sophisticated woman. I think in the back of her mind, after he became king, she might be dumped and would go away quietly (with her rewards of jewelry and happy memories). But Edward was the obstinate and spoilt child who refuse to give up his obsession-Wallis. Lady Elisabeth Bowles-Lyon grew up in the upper crust of society of course did not understood Wallis's willingness to please & inner insecurities. Ernst Simpson was Wallis's safety net in case the King grew tired of her. Edward drew a very simple picture to Wallis and being American did not know what a Queen consort requires. If she encouraged him to make a go of it, it reflected her inability to understand the workings of the British Monarchy. Did that make her selfish and self-absorbed ? Not really I think it was more self-preservation in the case of Wallis.

[Alixz]

Toward the end of their lives, did they have many close friends?  I know Wallis had some french aristos but did the Duke have many male friends?

I said I would post when I got to the end of the book.  According to Greg only a few of Wallis's friends attended her funeral:

One hundred seventy-five guests received invitations, including the Duchess's friends Lady Mosley, the Countess of Romanones, the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, Lady Alexandra Metcalfe, and Grace, Lady Dudley."  Wallis's country of birth was represented by US ambassador to the Court of St James's Charles Price.

Greg lists the following as her friends:  Diana, Lady Mosley; Madame Janine Metz; Princess Christine do Polignac; Aline, Countess of Romanones; and Mrs. Linda Mortimer.

Wallis died 14 years after David and it looks like he didn't have many friends whom he didn't share with her.  So many of their contemporaries were older and dying by 1972 when David died and 1986 when Wallis died that I don't think too many still existed.

[LadyCathy]

I think you are being unfair and unduly harsh on Wallis. She grew up dirt poor and got a crummy marriage (her first husband beat her) and finally settled on a convenient friendship marriage with Ernst Simpson. To her it is the triumph of being sensible than being in love. When POW fell in love with her, she sees it as kind of adventure. What woman in their right mind would refuse the most charming, powerful and well connected man in Britain ? Not many I bet. In fact she was in the same category of Thelma Furness & Freda Dudley-Ward. It was not Wallis who wanted to marry Edward, but the other way around. In her letters to her Aunt Bessie, one could see the mind of a reasonable and sophisticated woman. I think in the back of her mind, after he became king, she might be dumped and would go away quietly (with her rewards of jewelry and happy memories). But Edward was the obstinate and spoilt child who refuse to give up his obsession-Wallis. Lady Elisabeth Bowles-Lyon grew up in the upper crust of society of course did not understood Wallis's willingness to please & inner insecurities. Ernst Simpson was Wallis's safety net in case the King grew tired of her. Edward drew a very simple picture to Wallis and being American did not know what a Queen consort requires. If she encouraged him to make a go of it, it reflected her inability to understand the workings of the British Monarchy. Did that make her selfish and self-absorbed ? Not really I think it was more self-preservation in the case of Wallis.

 

I am not being unduly harsh about Wallis.  I am not being harsh at all, just telling it like it is with no personal investment in the truth of the matter.  To begin with, Wallis did not in any way grow up dirt poor.  She was a member of the one of the richest families in Baltimore with a millionaire uncle who paid the bills for her to go to the finest boarding schools and most exclusive summer camps in the country.  She went to finishing school and came out as a Baltimore debutante which is something no girl who is "dirt poor" can even dream about doing.  If it was not Wallis who wanted to marry Edward she certainly gave a good imitation of it when she did not break off the relatiionship with him.  Whether he was spoilt and obstinate does not matter.  He had no power to force her into marriage.  The choice was hers.  If she did not understand the workings of the British monarchy it was her responsibility to educate herself in the matter as quickly as she could.  Why should Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon care at all whether Wallis understood the workings of the British monarchy or anything at all about Wallis' insecurities?  You speak of self-preservation.  What on earth was there to preserve?  She was an American citizen with no obligation whatsoever to marry into the royal family.  David told her she was going to be Queen of England and she believed him.  If she viewed him as some absolute monarch who could decree her marriage to him, she was woefully lacking in any knowledge of the way the government in Britain worked.

[Eric_Lowe]

I don't think you understand Wallis's situation quite well. Yes, she had a rich uncle, but her mother had to work, while her father died young. She made a bad marriage due to love and decided to use her rains instead. I don't think anyone could blame her at all. It is easy for Elizabeth to see Wallis as an "adventuress" or "valvular", but I don't think she gave Wallis enough credit for her loyalty to David. In the end, she herself had seen how distraught Wallis was without her husband. No if the royal family could accept characters like Lily Langtry, Thelma Furness or even Camilla Parker Bowles, I don't think the treatment was fair to her. You made it sound so easy to say yes or no (like Nancy Reagan who think "Just say No" is enough to combat drugs). The real situation is more complicated. I think after the abdication Wallis had a duty to marry the man who "gave up so much for me". It is a thing that Wallis never demanded of David and genuinely shocked he did. Had the situation was reversed,  Wallis would not have done what David did. David was the purser while unlikely as she was miscast as the reluctant bride, one who feared that "people would blame her for the abdication" a scenario that she did not want to see. left to her ideal, she would have preferred to be a royal mistress and kept it at that. Edward VII never asked any of his mistresses to divorce, so that he could marry them ?

[LadyCathy]

I don't think you understand Wallis's situation quite well. Yes, she had a rich uncle, but her mother had to work, while her father died young. She made a bad marriage due to love and decided to use her rains instead. I don't think anyone could blame her at all. It is easy for Elizabeth to see Wallis as an "adventuress" or "valvular", but I don't think she gave Wallis enough credit for her loyalty to David. In the end, she herself had seen how distraught Wallis was without her husband. No if the royal family could accept characters like Lily Langtry, Thelma Furness or even Camilla Parker Bowles, I don't think the treatment was fair to her. You made it sound so easy to say yes or no (like Nancy Reagan who think "Just say No" is enough to combat drugs). The real situation is more complicated. I think after the abdication Wallis had a duty to marry the man who "gave up so much for me". It is a thing that Wallis never demanded of David and genuinely shocked he did. Had the situation was reversed,  Wallis would not have done what David did. David was the purser while unlikely as she was miscast as the reluctant bride, one who feared that "people would blame her for the abdication" a scenario that she did not want to see. left to her ideal, she would have preferred to be a royal mistress and kept it at that. Edward VII never asked any of his mistresses to divorce, so that he could marry them ?

I understand Wallis's situation perfectly, I just do not see it the same way you do.   However, I am not really sure what you are saying or what you mean.